This It's How It's Supposed to Be
by OptimisticGirl
Summary: This isn't how it's supposed to be. They should have time, enjoy a life together… but they can't. Not now, not ever. 5x21 spec fic.
**_My muse likes angst, what can I say?_**

 ** _As always enjoy, and reviews (and apparently angsty fucking episodes) feed the muse!_**

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She can't breathe.

This isn't how it's supposed to be. They should be moving into the house he picked, arguing over where knick knacks would go and the placement of furniture. They should be having lazy Sunday mornings in bed, wrapped in each other's warmth and water fights as they both do the dishes. They should be having date nights on the deck of the Jolly Roger, her more focused on the constellation of freckles on the side of his neck than the ones dotting the sky above them that he's pointing out.

They should have time but they don't because Killian's dead. She wasn't able to bring him back from the Underworld - the Savior, the bringer of everyone's happy endings, couldn't even save her own. If she could breathe she would laugh maniacally at the irony of it all.

Instead she's standing in a soft drizzle, surrounded by her family and friends in the Storybrooke cemetery and in front of a coffin where her True Love lies. She's dressed in all black and with her hair in a low ponytail, wishing she was anywhere but here. They had defeated Hades the previous night, Zelena coming to her senses at the last second and banishing the Lord of the Underworld back to his hellish domain. In the end true love hadn't been enough even for a God and she felt just the tiniest bit of satisfaction with that knowledge. It had been her mother who suggested the current hell she was enduring, saying that it would help her in the grieving process and make it all final.

But it was already final for Emma Swan. She had said goodbye to the love of her life in the depth of the Underworld, felt his fingers slip from her grasp as she ascended in the elevator and watched the tears trickle down his cheeks as her own vision blurred. She holds onto that moment now as the rain begins to pour harder, the priest's words drowned out by the sound of rain and the blood rushing in her ears.

 _This isn't how it's supposed to be._

She can feel her breath quicken as the casket begins to lower into the ground and she's almost certain her heart, the heart she was supposed to be able to split and share with Killian, is going to beat out of her chest. She can't do this. She can't be here. _He should be here,_ she thinks as the tears begin to fall rapidly down her cheeks. She recalls everything about him as the townspeople begin to move to toss dirt onto the coffin - his warm smile, how brilliantly blue his eyes were on a sunny day, the way his hair would fall over his forehead. She forces herself to relive the feeling of his hand clasped within hers and the solid form of his body as he would wrap his arms around her, how the smell of leather and sea followed him even after he hung up his great coat. She remembers how it felt to trace the scar on his cheek and a soft sob breaks from her when she realises he never told her how he got it and now… now she'll never know.

That's what breaks her. The hard knowledge that she will never hear his voice again, never sit and just listen to his rich accent as he regales Henry with a story from his pirating days or the way it would deepen when he was whispering endearments to her. She feels her legs give out, the handle of the umbrella slipping from her fingers and the cold drops of rain as they hit her exposed body. She feels strong arms wrap around her but they aren't the arms she wants - they are her father's, catching her before she can sink fully to the cold ground. Her fingers twist in the leather of his jacket as the rain drenches them, burying her face in his chest as the sobs she had been trying to hold back rip through her anew. She can sense Henry on her other side and her mother in front of her but they aren't who she wants. She wants _him_.

 _This isn't how it's supposed to be._

"Am I interrupting something?"

God, she's losing her mind now. She's hearing his voice when he's not really here and she sobs harder when she hears her name in that familiar lilting accent, tinged with horror and despair. She also hears Regina's shocked gasp not far away from her, the excited murmuring of Granny and Henry's whispered, "Oh my God." She feels her father's surprise intake of breath against her cheek and then her mother's familiar touch on her arm.

"Emma, open your eyes."

She shakes her head, her lower lip quivering. She can't. She can't open her eyes and see that hole, knowing her future is lying at the bottom of it, cold and dead. Her mother squeezes her arm again and then her father is picking her up and turning, literally holding her up as he runs a comforting hand through her rain soaked hair.

"Emma, look."

She opens her eyes then, something about her father's voice, urgent and comforting prompting her to crack her tear swollen eyes open. She doesn't see the grave that had been dug for her sailor but instead sees _him_. He's standing off to the side of the gathered townspeople, in the clothes he had died in with his hair plastered against his forehead from the rain and she makes an inhuman noise. She's not only hearing him but seeing him now and she knows she's losing her mind.

"Why am I seeing him?" she wails, uncaring as to how she looks to the rest of the town. She had to let go of the one person who understood her, who saw the fragile orphan and chipped at her walls to prove to her that she could love again - why was her mind betraying her like this? She just wanted this to end and go back to the home they would never share together, to try to keep her promise to him not to rebuild her armor…

"Emma… we can _all_ see him," her father croaks and his words cause her to stop breathing. If he can see Killian that means… before she can let the thought finish, before she can let that small flicker of hope bloom into a full flame she sees Killian move. He breaks into a dead run right for her and when he's within a few feet her father launches her forward like he had done that night at the ice wall and then she's there, in Killian's arm with his scent overpowering the smell of rain. Her arms go around his neck and she clings to the material of his jacket, letting her sobs get lost in the wet strands of his inky hair. His shoulders shake beneath her and she can feel his lips - his _warm_ lips - pressing against the side of her neck and ragged puffs of air causing goosebumps to break out on her chilled skin.

He was here. But he couldn't be. She had left his spirit in the Underworld and his body was in the ground…

Pulling back she looked into the ocean blue eyes she thought she would never see again, one hand anchoring on his shoulder as the other clasped the side of his face. "Are you really here?" she sobs.

Killian nodded, his own eyes bright with tears. "Aye, love, I'm really here."

"How?" she asks, pleading for an answer that would keep her precarious world from tipping into mayhem.

He smiles softly at her and her heart quickens when his hand comes up to stroke her cheek. "In short - Zeus. I did as you asked and moved on, could see a ship in the distance but before I could reach it he appeared and told me it wasn't my time, that Killian Jones's life had only just restarted."

She frowns at his words, blinking against the rain pouring down on them. "I- I don't understand…"

Before either of them could say another word a lightning bolt lit up the grey sky and hurled toward the ground, striking the tombstone above the open grave followed by the loudest clap of thunder Emma had ever heard. There was a moment of stunned silence as everyone watched smoke rise from the granite and then they were all moving, Emma clinging to Killian's arm as they came to stand at the foot of the grave. Her eyes widened as she read the words now engraved on the stone:

 _Captain Hook - "Feared pirate and villain"_

Emma looked to the flesh and blood man standing beside her. "W-what does this mean?"

"Captain Hook is dead," he said softly, nodding toward the open grave. "Zeus said from the moment I took up the moniker to my death by Excalibur I was him, no matter if I still called myself Killian. The day I became Captain Hook and began my quest for revenge Killian Jones ceased to exist." Blue eyes moved toward her and he smiled softly. "That is until I met you. You brought the man I use to be back to life - quite literally, Swan."

"So the villain Captain Hook is dead and in the coffin," Regina muttered, slightly in awe, "And the hero Killian Jones gets a second chance at life."

"Aye. No more Hook… just simply Killian."

Emma grasped the lapels of his jacket then, tugging him toward her until their lips were a hair's breath apart. She could feel his heart beating against her own chest and she smiled at him.

"You were always Killian to me," she whispered before bringing her lips to his.

He was here. They would have dates and silly arguments, sailing trips and quiet moments at home. She would learn the story of the scar on his cheek. They had time.

This was how it was supposed to be.


End file.
